Insulation is often produced in sheets that are rolled and shipped to a building construction site or the like. At the construction site, the sheets are unrolled and trimmed for installation into building wall and ceiling cavities. Such trimming produces large amounts of scrap insulation that is often discarded and dumped into landfills.
In spite of the inherent waste and expense of discarding scrap insulation, there has been no practical way to recycle such scrap insulation. For instance, existing machines for shredding insulation into small pieces for use as "blow-in" insulation have not previously proved adaptable to the recycling of scrap insulation.
Such existing shredding machines are expensive, high-volume machines designed only for producing blow-in insulation in insulation factories. One such a shredder uses a chain assembly to shred entire insulation sheets that are laid out flat. Another shredder has a large drum with cookie-cutter-type blades that rolls over entire laid-out sheets of insulation to cut the insulation into pieces.
Because of the expensive, high-volume design, such factory shredding machines are uneconomical to apply to sporadic recycling use. Moreover, factory shredding machines tend to be large and not easily transportable.